How to Fix Samsung Galaxy S2 Problems and Errors [Part 15]

Hey guys. Welcome to the 15th part of our Samsung Galaxy S2 Problems series. We’ve been flooded with a lot of emails from our readers who need help this past couple of weeks and there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of emails that were unanswered.

For those of you who were asking why we are posting our suggestions and solutions on our website. Well, there are a lot of emails that were worded differently but basically have the same issues. So, posting our answers on our website would make it easier for our readers to browse pre-existing solutions before they actually email us.

We take time reading all those emails and we spent even more time finding appropriate solutions to problems and writing them. We don’t want our efforts to go to waste so all of them will be posted on our site. For those who still have problems, email us at [email protected] and provide as much details as possible.

Samsung Galaxy S2 stopped charging even with new battery

Problem 1: Hello. My Samsung S2 is starting to act funny. I have this phone for a good 3 years now and this is the very first time it starts to act strange. The problem is basically about its charging mechanism not working. When the charger is plugged in, my phone doesn’t detect it and I have to replug it several times to work. Though a little older now, this phone is a reliable partner in my business so I really don’t want to let it go. I thought it was the battery so I changed it but the problem remains. Is there any explanation what’s happening to it? Thanks for your help. — Neal

Problem 2: Hello Droidguy. My wife’s Galaxy S2 only operates with the charger plugged in. As soon as you unplug it goes to a black screen with the Samsung Galaxy S II Logo. We’ve tried taking the battery out for more than a minute and tried to reboot by holding the on/off and volume down buttons but nothing works. Hoping you may have heard of this problem and can recommend a possible remedy. Thanks. — Mellis

Problem 3: My name is Ken and I own a Samsung Galaxy S2 that is not taking any charge. The Battery is working OK and the Charger also works fine because i tried them on my friend Samsung Galaxy S2. However the phone is dead and it’s not responding to the charging when I plug it in the wall or any plug socket for that matter. Could you please tell me what the problem may be? Thank you. — Ken

Problem 4: Hi. I don’t know if you’ll be able to help, but this is what has happened to my S2! The battery started to discharge quickly, very quickly so I plugged in my charger. The next thing that happened is that it rebooted and was stuck on the Samsung boot up logo. I then turned the phone off, it’s never turned back on again! I’ve tried charging with a charger, then with a different battery… Nothing, do you know anything that may help? Thanks. — Dave

Solution: Hi guys. Based on your problem description, it looks like the charging port of your phone is main. Try to physically check your phone by removing the casing and see if the screws are tight. Loose screws on the case can cause the charging port to lose reliable contact with the motherboard.

The best solution for your problem though is to let a professional repair the device. We cannot determine what’s the status of the motherboard or the charging port at this time. Solders deteriorate over time and there’s a chance that the charging port may no longer have a firm connection to the motherboard, causing the phone to not charge properly.

If you are familiar with electronics, you can do a quick Google search on how to open a Galaxy S2 to check on the motherboard yourself. Otherwise, let a technician check it for you.

Straight Talk Galaxy 2 won’t load the home screen

Problem: My problem happened after my son tried to use my phone to access his Facebook account. He said he has not done anything wrong with it, that the phone simply shut down by itself when he tried to log out. I told him not to touch my phone before because he has a habit of breaking things. He seems to have this ability to simply take things down. Anyway, trash aside, I really can’t understand why a perfectly working phone suddenly fails to load anything. All I’m getting is the black and white Samsung picture or logo. I have no money right now to get a new one so I have all ears to your suggestions to how I can make this phone work again. Money’s tight right now so if you can help me without telling me to get a new phone would be greatly appreciated.

I can give you information about my phone but right now I really don’t know what software its running. My son mentioned that he tried to root the phone too and I don’t know what that means.

By the way, I like your articles and I read them on my spare time. If you can help me, you would really make me a loyal reader. God bless you. — Martha

Solution: Hi Martha. Thank you for being a loyal fan of our website. Your problem is not uncommon for Galaxy S2 phones so we have a few suggestion to fix it. We think your son tried to change the operating system of your phone to something else. This process is also known as rooting. However, if this process is done correctly, it can mess up the device and cause the exact problem you’re having right now. The best thing to do in this case is to restore the default operating system of your phone. Don’t worry, we will walk you the entire steps to make it as easy as possible. Be advised however, that we will be doing a full Factory Reset, which means that we are deleting all your saved files like photos, songs, etc.

We assume that you have access to a computer and Internet when doing the steps as we need to get hold of Odin.

Step 3: Extract the downloaded file. Make sure to save it to a folder you can easily find. We recommend that you create a folder first in your desktop for this.

Step 4: Start ODIN One-Click then go to C:\Odin-OC

Full: Double-click on SPH-D710.EK02_CL704398-OneClick.exe

NoData: Double-click on SPH-D710.EK02_CL704398_NODATA-OneClick.exe

Boot your phone to Download mode

Power down phone

Simultaneously press and Hold Power and Volume Down until confirmation screen appears

Press Volume Up to enter Download mode

On your computer, start the ODIN flash process by pressing Start

Your phone should reboot automatically once the process is successful and the success indicator with the PASS should be shown on the screen.

*#9900# in Samsung Galaxy S2

Problem 1: Hello. My Samsung Galaxy S2 apparently doesn’t have enough memory for me to add more apps. After hours of research it appears I need to delete dump stack using *#9990# to see if this helps. I would just like to know if doing this will delete my pictures, texts and apps?

As I’m no whizz kid I am clueless as to what dumpstack actually is/means and nowhere seems to mention whether or not you need to perform a backup of files etc before deleting dumpstack. Please help as I would like to get this sorted asap. Thanks in advance and kind regards.– Bev

Problem 2: Hi. I’m having troubles with downloads on my S2. Every time I try to download something it either says there’s no space (even though it only has mostly the original apps and I have cleared cache and history) or it says that it can not be saved in default settings? I’m not sure how to change this!! Please help!! — Amy

Solution: Hi Bev and Amy. We can see that you both have a slightly similar issue in that you can’t install new apps on your phone. Unlike the S3 and later Galaxy models, your device have a rather limited internal memory space so you need to manage the number of apps that you can install. Even with an SD card, a Galaxy S2 still utilizes the internal storage space for most apps, which gives it a rather limited capacity. Anyhow, a simple solution to your problem is to dial *#9900# on your keypad, then select option number 2 or “Delete dumpstate/logcat”.

As for your concern Bev on whether this will delete your contacts and messages, the step will only delete the log files of apps so there is no risk of losing those. Doing this should give you about 1.4 GB of free space afterwards.

The process android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly

Problem: Hello. I use a Samsung Galaxy S2. I have been unable to retrieve numbers stored on my phone (not SIM) for some days now. Each Time I try to retrieve a number, I get this error message: The process android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. Kindly assist and tell me what to do. Cheers. — Yugo

Solution: Hi Yugo. Based on our research here, this error is being caused by an incompatible app on your phone. Unfortunately, there is no specific app that can be pointed out as most of users with the same problem mentioned different apps. However, the best way to resolve this is to uninstall apps individually until you isolate the cause. If you installed some apps recently, we recommend that you uninstall them so you’ll know which one is the culprit.

While a Factory Reset is recommended by some users, we don’t think it’s simply too much.

Another user with the same problem suggests clearing the Apps data cache then opening Contact Storage afterwards. To delete the data cache, please follow the steps below:

Go to Settings

Go to Applications

Select Manage Applications

Choose All tab

Scroll down to Contacts and select clear data cache

Galaxy S2 keeps on losing signal

Problem: Hi I am hoping you can help me. I have a Samsung s2 Galaxy which is less than 1 year old. We have reception issues in this area, however when I go to areas where reception is readily available, my phone appears to have no bars, it says “not registered on this network ” and has the circle with a cross through it. If I restart my phone I get bars and it works. Is there something I can do to the settings to stop this? Or is my phone faulty? — Dianne

Solution: Hi Dianne. Your smartphone is supposed to pick up available signals once it’s within range but apparently it’s not doing so. That tells us that it may have a problem that can either be caused by faulty software or hardware.

To isolate the cause of the problem, we recommend that you do a factory reset of your phone so it runs the basic apps again. If that doesn’t solve the issue, then it’s safe to assume that it’s a hardware trouble.

Galaxy S2 update to Jelly Bean 4.1 drains power faster

Problem: Hi my name is John. I have a galaxy s2 and I recently upgraded the software from Ice Cream to Jelly Bean 4.1. My battery drains extremely faster now. I’ve ordered a new battery and charger. And nothing has changed. What can I do to correct this issue. Thanks.

Solution: Hi John. Upgrading your phone’s operating system must have changed the settings as well as each individual app’s settings. Fortunately, Jelly Bean gives you more options to conserve the phone’s power than Ice Cream. In this post, we will give you hints on what to do to lower down the phone’s energy consumption in no time.

What this guide aims to achieve is to basically walk you through in disabling some features and settings.

Step 1: The first step is to ensure that Power Saving Mode is enabled. This is one of the main steps that a power-conscious user must do to extend battery life. This mode automatically modify the settings of apps and of the phone to low. To do this, please follow the steps below:

Tap the Menu key on the home screen

Select Settings

Tap Power saving mode

Enable Use power saving mode (but if a Power saving mode prompt appears, just tap OK

Select Custom power saving settings

Select Power saving starts at

Select your desired setting

Make sure to check Turn off Wi-Fi, Turn off Bluetooth, and Turn off GPS (Another way to save battery power on your phone is by turning off Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi when not in use. Alternatively, you can easily disable these features by using their corresponding widget in the home screen.)

Check Brightness if it’s enabled. If it is, simply tap it then change your desired settings

Tap Screen timeout and select the most lowest yet comfortable setting for you

Tap Home key to end

Using live wallpaper has been proven to drain battery faster so we also want to change your wallpaper settings.

Tap Menu key in the home screen

Select Wallpaper

Choose your desired Wallpaper option. Make sure not to tap Live wallpapers.

Pick a wallpaper and tap Set wallpaper

If you have Wi-Fi at home, we recommend that you switch to it instead of using your 4G or data connection while browsing the internet. Using Wi-Fi connection can reduce battery drain by 50% slower because your phone uses lesser power. If you enable Hotspot feature on your phone, make sure to turn it off when not in use. Stopping non-essential background apps from running can also extend battery life.

Tap the Menu key

Go to Settings

Select Applications

Tap the Running tab

Select an app

Tap Stop then tap the Back key twice once done (if Stop option is not available, that means that that particular cannot be stopped)

Lastly, turning off vibrations can greatly improve battery life because it prevents the phone from turning on the mechanical part of the vibrator. To turn off vibrate notifications:

Tap Sound from the Settings menu

Tap Vibrate and ring

Tap the Home key once done (Remember that vibrate is enabled when the feature is checked.)

‘Package Access Helper’ drains battery fast

Problem: My mobile battery used to last for at least 15-18 hours a day. Two days ago, I noticed that it hardly lasted for even 3 hours. I checked up on what was causing it and I found out ‘Package Access Helper’ taking up 69% of my battery drain. This is the first time I’m seeing Package Access Helper on my battery drain list. It took forever to install or uninstall an app and a really long time to recharge my phone(4-6 hours). Also, my phone started heating up like crazy. I restarted my phone and the consumption came down to 42% and app install/uninstall started working but not for long and it still kept heating up with longer recharge time. I had to restart my phone often. I finally settled for a factory reset and everything seemed to be normal. After about an hour Package Access Helper showed on my battery drain list and now taking up 26% and starting to cause the same problems.

Is there any way to get rid of this from draining my battery unnecessarily and stop these problems? And I don’t want to root my phone. Thanks in advance. — Hanniel

Solution: Hi Hanniel. Package Access Helper is one of the essential system processes of Android operating system, specially designed to handle installation and/or uninstallation of apps. This means that this is not an app that we can just do away with by uninstalling it. Unfortunately, there is deeper explanation from Google why it seems to be heavily eating up CPU resources and needs a lot of battery power.

A web research reveals that this system process can be disabled using Watchdog app. It’s not normally recommended to stop system processes but Watchdog app can kill Package Access Helper quite easily without the unwanted consequences. In fact, according to a user who has tried it, doing so even improve the overall performance of the phone. While this is unconfirmed on our end, we suggest that you try it on your own risk. You may also try performing a factory reset on your phone and see it that helps.

Samsung Galaxy S2 not detecting SIM

Problem: Dear Sir/Madam. I’m really having a strange issue with my Samsung Galaxy S II. My Samsung Galaxy S2 is having this problem. It’s like it doesn’t realize the SIM card is inserted. I didn’t do anything with regards dropping it or getting it wet, it worked, If i put it on, it says “No Service”. Now it says it’s on flight mode, whether the flight mode is on or not. If I try to access the “Mobile Network” settings it says “Insert SIM card to access network services”. I remember, I have done a software update on the phone three weeks ago, other than that, I have not done anything crazy with it. Phone worked fine since I bought it until yesterday… Everything else still does work fine (apart from battery seems a bit erratic now which it wasn’t before)… Very strange!!!– Buba

Solution: Hello Buba. This problem can be caused by either a faulty hardware or software. On the hardware side, the most common culprit is loose connection between the copper connector and the SIM card itself. Moisture can also create particles around the copper connectors, causing poor connection between them and the SIM card. To check on the this, you must have the basic tools to open up the phone. We don’t recommend this however, especially, if you’re not familiar with electronics. It may sound simple to some but opening the phone by yourself may give you more trouble than good so we suggest that you let a professional handle it for you.

Another good way to isolate the trouble is by testing another SIM. You can also try to use your SIM card on another phone to see if works. Most providers allow you to buy another SIM card for about $2 so you may just want to grab one if you have no other device to insert your SIM to.

If the issue is caused by corrupted software after you updated the phone though, restoring the phone’s factory defaults would surely help. A Factory Reset ensures that your device runs only the tested software and apps so it’s a good way of determining what the problem really is. You can Google the steps on how to do a factory reset on a Samsung Galaxy 2.

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Feel free to send us your questions, suggestions and problems you’ve encountered while using your Android phone. We support every Android that is available in the market today. And don’t worry, we won’t charge you a single penny for your emails. Email us via [email protected] any time. We read every email but can’t guarantee a response. Lastly, if we were able to help you, please help us spread the word by sharing our posts with your friends or visit our Troubleshooting Page. Thanks.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer: we are not affiliated with the device manufacturers or phone carriers we mention in any way, all suggestions are based on our own experience and research, you may use our advice at your own discretion.